My daughter and I were preparing to head home from our holiday when I received a text from the house-sitter — who was caring for our two cats — back in London with an offer she believed I couldn’t refuse. She would stay on and pay rent to live in my daughter’s room. It was a win-win situation in her opinion.
The obvious glitch was my daughter wanted to come home and sleep in her own bed. The house-sitter, who hoped to settle in our neighbourhood, seemed put out.
She had been recommended by a friend, who told me her pets were being well cared for, while she was away. However, once my friend returned she found she had a new lodger who didn’t want to leave. In the end my friend allowed her to stay a couple of weeks until her next job (with me) started.
When I received the text proposal I felt a rush of resentment at being forced to feel responsible for this thirtysomething alone in London, but I also had admiration for her innovation considering the astronomical rents being charged in the capital today. The average monthly rental in inner London is £3,087, according to Hamptons.
To be fair I think she thought my daughter would be away at university most of the time and her bed unused. I should also add that the cats (and house) were well cared for while we were away.
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However, my 20-year-old daughter was less forgiving. Rightly pointing out that if she told me she had no accommodation organised and was going to wing it with a bit of house/pet-sitting I’d tell her to sort herself out.
Indeed in Edinburgh, where she is at university, room rents have risen 22 per cent in the past year and she has had to be organised (and resilient) to find accommodation. Flatsharers now have to compete for a limited number of properties by attending multiple viewings, compiling personal statements and paying 6 to 12 months’ rent up front.
What is more, the appointment of a private rented sector ombudsman as proposed in the Renters (Reform) Bill should in theory empower tenants to complain about poor conditions. In reality it is unlikely while no-fault evictions remain and there is such a dire shortage of affordable housing.
The reforms, which received their second reading this month also mean tenants have the right to seek permission to keep a pet. However, since my experience this summer I have heard numerous people, including work colleagues, suggest that if you like pets then pet-sitting or house-sitting is a clever way to beat the rental crisis and stay in places you couldn’t normally afford.
I would say that house and pet sitting may be a fun way to find a place to stay for a week or two, but not a long-term solution. As ours found, it’s no substitute for a stable home, there can be awkward gaps between jobs and short-term accommodation to fill those gaps is expensive.
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Expensive short-term lets are often being used by desperate tenants who cannot find long-term solutions. As I’ve said before, we need tax incentives for landlords to switch from short to long-term letting.
We need to cultivate landlords. We need more, not fewer, rental homes. I totally accept that landlords bidding against buyers would force up the price of homes, but we need to find ways to increase the number of homes that are truly affordable to rent and buy, in areas of high demand.
Gone are the days when you can rock up with a backpack and fall into a cheap houseshare as I did in my 20s. Almost all the places in southwest London where I rented with groups of Brits and Antipodeans in the 1990s (Wimbledon, Battersea and Clapham) are now gentrified beyond the reach of most young people. Wages have failed to keep pace with either house prices or rents.
The price of renting a room in some areas of London has risen by almost 50 per cent in the past year, according to the website SpareRoom. In SW4, where we are, the price of renting a room has risen from £967 to £1,099 a month in the past year. No wonder our housesitter couldn’t afford to realise her dream of settling in the area without a highly paid job.
In the past, flatsharing was a fun rite of passage before you saved for a deposit and settled down (in my case not far from where I had rented). Now it is a brutal necessity that can drag on way beyond finding a partner — many of the first-time buyers we speak to are in their thirties and forties with young families and are prepared to change jobs and move miles to find a property that they can afford.
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The rental sector isn’t working for anyone — neither landlords nor tenants are happy. There are no shortcuts: house and pet-sitting can be fun, but it doesn’t make up for being locked out of the housing market and it is a sad indictment of the state of the housing market that it is being touted as a feasible solution.
